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2
Four Kinds of Schools
S
ome kind of STEM education is offered in virtually every school,
but the committee identified four broad categories of programs that
offer a special emphasis on these subjects (see National Research
Council, 2011):1
• Elite or selective STEM-focused schools. These schools serve only
highly motivated and able students and focus on preparing them
for ambitious postsecondary study and STEM careers.
• Inclusive STEM-focused schools. These schools do not have
admissions requirements but offer specialization in one or more
of the STEM disciplines. Many have the mission of helping stu-
dents from population subgroups who are not well represented
in STEM fields prepare for college study and STEM careers.
• STEM-focused career and technical education (CTE) schools or
programs. CTE education may be offered in high schools that
make this a theme, in such programs as career academies within
comprehensive high schools, or in regional centers that serve
many schools (Stone, 2011). Such programs are designed to pre-
pare students for a broad range of STEM careers and often focus
on engaging students at risk for dropping out of school.
1 The workshop focused most on mathematics and science education, in part because there
is more research and data for these two areas than for technology and engineering education.
7
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8 SUCCESSFUL STEM EDUCATION
• STEM programs in comprehensive schools that are not STEM
focused. The majority of the nation’s schools are comprehen-
sive, and thus they educate many of the students who go on to
STEM careers. Many of these schools offer advanced coursework
through the Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate
Programs and other opportunities for highly motivated students.
Presenters reviewed research and perspectives on each of these school
types.
SELECTIVE SCHOOLS
Focusing on the students who are the most interested and able may
be the best known way to emphasize STEM education in school—but
even in the category of schools with selective admissions criteria there
are many approaches.
Example: A Residential School in a High-Tech Region
The North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics was founded
in 1980, and this residential school was the first of its kind, Todd Roberts
explained.2 It serves 680 students in the 11th and 12th grades from every
North Carolina district, and it also offers distance learning opportunities
to an additional 800 students across the state. Admissions considerations
include SAT scores, grades, and ambitious course taking. The school’s
curriculum provides a special focus in mathematics, science, and tech -
nology, along with a full complement of academic study. Though not a
part of the state’s public K-12 system, it is supported by the state and
charges no fees to students. Since 2007 the school has been a constituent
member of the University of North Carolina System. More than 7,000
students have graduated from the program to date, Roberts noted, and
60 percent have gone on to college study and careers in STEM fields.
A principal benefit of the program, in Roberts’ view, is that it provides
students from every part of the state with the opportunity to pursue
advanced learning opportunities and to do so with a group of students
who are equally excited about science and mathematics. In response to
a question, Roberts noted that the school has a program for identifying
students before high school who might be interested in attending and
preparing them either for applying to the school or succeeding else -
where. The program promotes collaboration among the students—there
is no class rank—and encourages all students to pursue opportunities to
2 For more information about the school, see http://www.ncssm.edu/ [June 2011].
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9
FOUR KINDS OF SCHOOLS
conduct research and work with mentors. Because the school is located
in the Research Triangle Park area of North Carolina, there are numer-
ous universities and research facilities close by, and the students benefit
from these resources both during the school year and through summer
internships.
Of the school’s graduates, 63 percent return to live and work in North
Carolina after college, Roberts added. The state leaders who established
the school through legislation had envisioned that it would not only serve
as a model for educational improvement, but also support the state’s
economic goals by providing a steady supply of highly qualified workers.
From the state’s perspective, establishing a specialized school focused on
science and mathematics that would be independent of the school system
has paid off.
Graduates of Selective Specialized Schools: Research Findings
Looking beyond a single school, Robert Tai and Rena Subotnik
described preliminary findings from a study they are conducting of
graduates from selective public high schools of science, mathematics, or
technology (Subotnik, Tai, and Almarode, 2011). The study is designed
to assess the value these schools add by developing and maintaining the
supply of students who pursue advanced degrees and careers in STEM
fields. The researchers have surveyed students 4-6 years after graduation
and combined the results with other data available about the cohort from
the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS)3 to develop answers
to two questions: Are these graduates more likely to enter STEM pro -
grams in college and STEM careers than other students? Which educa-
tional models used in their schools seem to yield the most students who
pursue STEM-related study and careers?
First, Tai noted, there is no clear definition of this type of school. For
their study, they identified four subtypes among the selective schools
that specialize in STEM education: residential programs; comprehensive
programs that have a special focus on STEM; specialized STEM programs
that operate within a larger school; and half-day programs, in which stu-
dents commute between a specialized program and their home schools.
Finding that these schools offer very different experiences for students,
Tai and Subotnik collected data from two of each of these four types.
Although there is variation among the subtypes, some common features
include advanced STEM coursework, expert teachers, like-minded peers
who are interested in STEM, and opportunities for independent research.
Tai and Subotnik’s primary outcome measure was whether or not the
3 For more information about NELS, see http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/nels88/ [June 2011].
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10 SUCCESSFUL STEM EDUCATION
TABLE 2-1 Students’ Goals and Choices of Major by High School
Type (in percentage)
Entered High School Chose
Intending to Pursue STEM-Related
High School Type STEM Career College Major
Residential specialized 77.9 56.8
Comprehensive specialized 59.8 42.2
Specialized school within a school 78.9 65.5
Half-day specialized 74.5 50.9
SOURCE: Adapted from Subotnik, Tai, and Almarode (2011).
students reported having completed an undergraduate major in a STEM
field, and they asked a range of questions about the student’s high school
experiences.
Tai set the context by reporting on NELS data about students who
entered high school thinking they were interested in science and remained
engaged in science by the end of their college careers. Among all students
who began high school interested in science, 40.7 percent completed an
undergraduate degree in science; and among those who were interested
in science and also were high performers in science and mathematics,4
46.6 did so. Tai and Subotnik’s data show that students who entered high
school interested in science and also attended a specialized high school
program are significantly more likely to stay in science—64.9 percent of
them did so. For comparison, students who were not initially interested
in science but switched into a science field are much less likely to choose
an undergraduate science major: 21.9 percent of all students were in this
group; 34.0 percent of the high performers were; and 27.5 percent of those
who attended a specialized high school but were not initially interested in
science were. In other words, students who are interested in science prior
to high school are significantly more likely to stay in the field.
There was also variation both in students’ goals as they entered high
school and in their ultimate choices of major across the four types of spe-
cialized schools: see Table 2-1.
Tai and Subotnik used statistical procedures to determine how much
of this variation could be accounted for by differences among these school
types and how much could be accounted for by variations among the
students. They calculated that school-level differences accounted for 3.6
4 Tai explained that their comparison group was identified through a national academic
talent search program and was composed of students, matched by age, grade, and stan -
dardized test scores, who had also chosen to participate in formal science and mathematics
activities.
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11
FOUR KINDS OF SCHOOLS
percent of the variation in whether or not students completed an under-
graduate science major: thus, 96.4 percent was accounted for by student
differences.
Additional survey questions allowed them to explore some of the dif-
ferences in the students’ experiences. Their preliminary data indicate that,
among graduates of specialized STEM high school programs:
• Students who participated in or conducted original scientific
research while in high school were 70 percent more likely to major
in a STEM field than those who did not.
• Students who participated in internships or had mentors were 20
percent more likely to major in a STEM field than those who did
not.
• Students who reported a strong sense that they “belonged” dur-
ing their high school years were 22 percent more likely to choose
a STEM major than those who did not report “belonging.”
• Students who reported that their teachers frequently made con-
nections across the curriculum were 23 percent more likely to
choose a STEM major than those who did not so report.
Each individual factor, Tai observed, may not have a profound effect
on its own, but taken together “they open up a pathway” for students into
STEM fields. These preliminary data provide a more detailed picture of
why students who graduate from specialized schools pursue STEM fields
in college at a rate nearly 50 percent higher than that of other students.
INCLUSIVE STEM-FOCUSED SCHOOLS
Schools and programs that offer a broader population of students the
chance to focus on STEM subjects have some things in common with the
selective schools, but there are differences as well.
Example: A Hybrid School
Montgomery Blair High School, located in a Washington, DC, suburb,
offers some of the features of both types.5 This public school, which serves
a demographically diverse population, is home to a highly selective STEM
magnet program. Principal Daryl Williams explained that it is part of a
Montgomery County network of programs located within neighborhood
schools but designed to attract students from a wider geographic area
5 For more information about Montgomery Blair High School, see http://www.
montgomeryschoolsmd.org/schoolodex/schooloverview.aspx?s=04757 [June 2011].
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12 SUCCESSFUL STEM EDUCATION
by offering academically demanding programs. Montgomery Blair offers
all students the chance to study in one of five academies: entrepreneur-
ship and business management; human service professions; international
studies and law; media literacy; and science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics. The school also has two magnet programs—one in com -
munication arts and one in science, mathematics, and computer science.
Williams noted that 400 of the school’s 2,864 students are enrolled in the
science and mathematics magnet program, which is distinct from the
five academies (and thus travel by bus from neighborhoods outside the
school’s catchment area).
The science, technology, engineering, and mathematics academy and
the related magnet program share the goals of giving students the oppor-
tunity to pursue independent and collaborative research projects, as well
as to work with mentors at local businesses and research organizations.
A Texas STEM Program: Research Findings
In 2003, Texas inaugurated a public-private partnership program,
the Texas High School Project (THSP), dedicated to helping low-income
students prepare for postsecondary study and helping low-performing
schools improve. The Texas Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math -
ematics Initiative (T-STEM) is one element of that initiative, Viki Young
explained (see Young, 2011). Since 2006 the state has invested $120 million
to open 51 high school academies and 7 technical assistance centers that
provide professional development and other services to Texas schools.
A key goal for these centers is to improve outcomes for all schools, not
just the academies, which are designed as demonstration schools. The
academies do not have selection requirements—students are admitted
by lottery if the school is oversubscribed. Because T-STEM is intended to
serve high-need students, the academies are located in high-need areas
and are required to maintain student populations in which more than 50
percent of the students are economically disadvantaged or members of
traditionally disadvantaged ethnic and racial groups.
Young and her colleagues used data from a 4-year longitudinal evalu-
ation of the THSP to analyze the effects of this program on student out -
comes (Young, 2011). They used both qualitative and quantitative methods
to study the implementation of T-STEM. The variety of outcome measures
used to gauge T-STEM’s influence included results from the Texas Assess-
ment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) in several subjects, passage of
Algebra I by 9th grade, grade promotion, and rates of absenteeism.
The preliminary results, Young explained, indicate that students who
attended the T-STEM academies performed slightly better than their peers
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13
FOUR KINDS OF SCHOOLS
at comparable schools6 in both mathematics (9th and 10th grades) and sci-
ence (10th grade; there is no 9th grade science test). The T-STEM students
were more likely than their peers to pass all of the required parts of the
TAKS, and T-STEM 9th graders have lower rates of absenteeism.
Young cited several factors that may have influenced these outcomes.
First, both students and faculty come to the T-STEM academies by choice.
Though families may not have sought out a STEM focus, they have sought
an academically rigorous program and are likely to be more academically
motivated than other families. Student attrition may also affect the results.
The academies report that students who find the workload too great or do
not feel that they fit in tend to leave: 22 percent of students leave between
9th and 10th grade and 35 percent leave between 10th and 11th grade.
These “dropouts” are important because TAKS results are reported only
for students who had been at their schools since 9th grade.
The academies also offer a number of supports for students who may
not be well prepared for a rigorous STEM curriculum when they enter.
The supports include one-on-one tutoring, extra instruction for small
groups, and credit recovery (opportunities to retake a course in which
a student was not successful). Although such supports are also found at
other schools, Young highlighted the “climate of high expectations” at the
T-STEM academies, the opportunities for close relationships between stu-
dents and faculty that result from the time set aside for advisory groups
and regular check-ins, and the supports for college preparation activities.
The academies are small (100 students per grade), and Young pointed
out that this allows all students to have teachers who know them as indi -
viduals and also allows teachers to track students’ progress. However,
she noted, the T-STEM academies are not uniformly implementing the
blueprint that was intended to guide them.
The T-STEM academies strive for other outcomes, such as college
readiness, mastery of 21st century skills, and involvement in out-of-school
experiences that prepare them for STEM careers. However, these sorts
of outcomes have not been consistently measured, in part because the
T-STEM program has only been in place for a few years. It will take time
before these kinds of outcomes for T-STEM students develop and can be
measured, though Young suggested that they may be the most significant.
Over time, she suggested, it will be important to study the math and sci-
ence literacy of T-STEM students, their readiness for college, and the rate
at which they choose to major in STEM fields. In addition, she believes,
researchers should study the effects of inclusive STEM schools in other
states, and should build the capacity to look longitudinally at high school
6 The researchers used statistical procedures to identify comparison schools that were
similar to the T-STEM academies: see Appendix A in Young (2011).
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14 SUCCESSFUL STEM EDUCATION
and postsecondary experiences. She also noted that they should seek
ways to control for the selection bias that may have affected the current
results and look more closely at the specific features of the approach used
at the T-STEM academies to identify those most closely associated with
desired outcomes.
STEM-FOCUSED CAREER AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION
Defining CTE—and understanding its relationship to STEM educa-
tion more broadly—is no less complicated than defining the other cat -
egories of STEM education. Nevertheless, James Stone pointed out, the
primary goal for CTE is to develop technologically proficient workers.
Example: Many Options in a Single School
Lake Travis High School, a school of just over 2,000 students in Aus -
tin, Texas, has organized its curriculum into six institutes: advanced sci -
ence and medicine; mathematics, engineering, and architecture; humani -
ties, technology, and communications; veterinary and agricultural science;
business, finance, and marketing; and fine arts. As Jill Siler explained,
the district has just one high school and as the population has grown, it
sought a way to provide students with a small-school experience without
building a second high school.
The institutes are designed to be flexible—students select their course
of study and can move between the institutes. The school is run on an
alternating block schedule, which allows time for longer class periods.
Many of the credits are articulated so students can earn credits at the local
community college, and the math, engineering, and architecture institute
offers six year-long engineering courses through Project Lead the Way.7 In
the STEM-related institutes, students can further specialize and can also
undertake field work or find mentors at local research or other sites or
engage in distance learning.
Types of Career and Technical Education
Lake Travis High School’s flexible approach to providing career and
technical education—in which students can partake of as much of it as
they wish—can be found in many models. As Stone explained, more than
90 percent of high school students take at least one CTE course, though
only 17 percent do so as part of CTE focus or concentration (Levesque
7 Project Lead the Way provides STEM curricula to middle and high schools. For more
information, see http://www.pltw.org/ [July 2011].
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15
FOUR KINDS OF SCHOOLS
et al., 2008). While the goals for career and technical education are not
precisely the same as those for STEM education, he added, all career and
technical education is related to some aspect of the STEM fields, and he
sought to identify which CTE approaches most effectively promote the
learning of STEM subjects (Stone, 2011).
Stone identified five structures through which career and technical
education is generally offered, though they overlap in some cases. Two
are entities focused completely on CTE: regional career technical centers
and CTE high schools. Three other approaches are generally housed in
traditional comprehensive high schools: career academies, programs of
study, and career clusters or pathways.
Regional Career Technical Centers
Regional career technical centers are designed to provide 11th and
12th grade students with instruction not available at their home schools,
and students typically spend half days in the centers, although a few are
full-day. Stone said that there is limited evidence about the effectiveness
of these programs, in part because student data are collected by the home
schools and cannot easily be linked to time spent in regional centers.
He noted that many center faculty lack traditional academic credentials
because the focus is on preparation for occupations and instructors need
to be skilled in the occupation, preparation for which comes through non-
college providers (e.g., apprenticeship, work experience), and the centers
often have limited academic offerings. There are approximately 1,200 such
centers in the United States.
CTE High Schools
CTE high schools offer core academic coursework while also requir-
ing students to complete CTE courses in order to graduate. Students
are asked to choose a career focus, usually at the beginning of 9th
grade. There are approximately 900 such schools in the United States.
One such school is Blackstone Valley Technical High School in Massa -
chusetts, a school in which students perform above state averages on
the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System and also have a
graduation rate that is 15 points above the state average. Students must
complete 32 credits of vocational/technical education classes, choosing
from options that include auto body and auto tech, carpentry, culinary
arts, and health services, as well as more STEM-intensive areas, such as
electronics and information technology. Students may also take Project
Lead the Way courses. However, Stone noted that the school is selective
and that the percentages of low-income and minority students in the
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16 SUCCESSFUL STEM EDUCATION
school’s population are lower than state averages. Some data on these
programs are available in the Common Core of Data collected by the
National Center for Education Statistics.
Career Academies
Career academies allow students to organize their studies around a
career theme, such as health, computer technology, or business and finance;
to build relationships with faculty devoted to that theme; and to be part of
a group of students at their home school who share their interests. Such
programs have become very common, Stone observed; approximately 2,500
high schools now have them.
Programs of Study
“Program of study” is a term used in the federal Carl D. Perkins
Career and Technical Education Improvement Act of 2006 to describe
programs that help students make the transition from secondary to post -
secondary schooling. State and local agencies that receive federal funding
through this legislation are required to offer programs that coordinate
academic and CTE coursework and prepare students to obtain industry
or academic credentials.8
Career Clusters or Pathways
Career clusters and pathways describe ways of grouping coursework
related to different occupations or industries to help guide students in
choosing a sequence of high school courses that will prepare them for a
field in which they are interested. Sixteen clusters have been defined by
the states’ “Career Clusters Initiative.”9 One is science, technology, engi-
neering, and mathematics, but a number of the others (e.g., agriculture,
information technology, manufacturing) relate to STEM education more
broadly defined.
Approaches to Career and Technical Education
Regardless of the school structure, Stone explained, there are a range
of curricula and pedagogical approaches to career and technical edu-
cation. For example, Project Lead the Way is a very well-known pre-
8For more information, see http://cte.ed.gov/nationalinitiatives/localstudyimplementation.
cfm [August 2011].
9 For more information, see http://www.careerclusters.org/ [August 2011].
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17
FOUR KINDS OF SCHOOLS
engineering curriculum that schools can adopt. It focuses on provid-
ing hands-on experiences that prepare students for engineering-related
careers. To date there has been one independent longitudinal study of
this program and its outcomes, by Schenk and colleagues (Schenk et al.,
2009). They found that students who participate in Project Lead the Way
are more likely than their peers to be enrolled in a gifted and talented pro-
gram, have better math and science skills prior to enrolling, and perform
better on state assessments. They also are less likely than their peers to be
eligible for free and reduced-price lunch, to be female, and to belong to a
minority group. The program’s own research shows that it is effective at
reducing achievement gaps among student groups and improving both
test scores and college readiness.
Other approaches include curriculum integration, in which links
among academic disciplines are explored and students have opportuni-
ties to learn about the real-world applications of mathematics and sci -
ence; project-based learning, in which students conduct extended inquiry
projects; and work-based learning, in which supervised learning activities
take place at a work site.
Stone described a study he and colleagues conducted to determine
whether enhancing the mathematics instruction embedded in a technical
education program would build students’ mathematics skills while still
developing the intended technical skills (Stone et al., 2008). In this study
of 200 teachers and 3,000 students, teachers were randomly assigned to
either the experimental or control situation. The study included programs
in agriculture, information technology, automotive technology, health,
and business, but the focus was the mathematics instruction (in applied,
traditional, and college preparatory mathematics) that occurred naturally
as part of the curriculum in each area. The researchers were exploring a
model of curriculum integration and professional development called
Math-in-CTE and were careful to monitor the fidelity with which the
teachers implemented the approach.
The results showed that students in the experimental classes scored
significantly higher than those in the control classes on both the Terra
Nova and Accuplacer mathematics assessments, without any loss in the
development of occupational or technical skills. Work is currently under
way to explore the effects of a similar model for enhancing science instruc-
tion in a CTE context.
Stone suggested that other pedagogical approaches, such as project-
based learning and work-based learning, also hold promise as means of
enhancing STEM learning, but there is as yet limited evidence for these
approaches. There is also very little evidence regarding the effectiveness
of the different structures through which career and technical education
is delivered. Stone noted that it can be difficult to distinguish STEM edu -
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18 SUCCESSFUL STEM EDUCATION
cation from CTE approaches for purposes of research, but he suggested
that there are opportunities to address important questions with rigorous
research. In his view, further exploration of ways to improve science and
mathematics instruction in the context of career and technical education,
and of how conducive a variety of CTE approaches are to efforts to boost
science and mathematics, would be very useful. He noted that spending
more time in science and mathematics classes is not likely to be as ben-
eficial as would finding better ways to use already available instructional
time to build important skills.
STEM EDUCATION IN NON-STEM-FOCUSED SCHOOLS
The majority of U.S. students are educated in traditional schools, and
many of those schools do an excellent job at STEM education. Many high
schools offer advanced placement and international baccalaureate courses
for highly motivated students. Many STEM-related programs are avail-
able to middle and high schools, and some schools excel even without
special programs. Several participants discussed different schools and
their approaches to STEM education.
Example: A Diverse K-8 School
Janet Elder, the principal of Christa McAuliffe School in Jersey City,
New Jersey, said that no one factor is responsible for what the school has
achieved. The school serves a very diverse population with a high mobil -
ity rate: of its 1,000 students, 82 percent are eligible for free and reduced-
price lunches, and 65 percent speak a language other than English at
home. Nevertheless, in 2010, 90 percent of the school’s 8th graders and
91 percent of 4th graders scored at the proficient level or above on New
Jersey’s science assessment. The school has won awards in science: most
notably, it was a 2010 finalist in the INTEL School of Distinction competi -
tion and the 2011 state winner of the Disney Planet Challenge, and it has
won other awards and grants.
The school offers a challenging standards-based curriculum for all
students, Elder explained, as well as a number of special programs,
including after-school tutoring, science and technology classes, and robot-
ics. Among 8th graders, 25 percent take both algebra and physics, and, by
district policy, the other 75 percent are tracked into the general 8th grade
curriculum. “That is not by my choice,” Elder stressed. She is hoping to
significantly increase participation in the challenging courses and to offer
teachers professional development so that they can become certified to
teach the high school level material, but she has not yet received approval
from the state superintendent for these proposals.
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FOUR KINDS OF SCHOOLS
Elder attributes the school’s success to consistency in three areas:
building community involvement, through a range of parent resource
and outreach activities, including technology classes; student engage-
ment, which is developed through a large number of in-class and extra -
curricular opportunities that target students’ interests; and instructional
leadership, fostered through professional development, peer coaching,
and opportunities to collaborate. She stressed that strong teachers have
been critical to the school’s success. Yet, she noted, other factors have
impeded the school’s progress. High student mobility is perhaps their
greatest challenge, and it is exacerbated by state testing requirements that
drain time and resources. She worries that the state’s assessments will not
soon be aligned with the Common Core standards, which New Jersey has
adopted: “We are going to be teaching something that isn’t going to be
tested and we will be a failing school in a few years.”
Effective Mathematics Education
Many individual schools are very effective, William Schmidt agreed,
but, on average, U.S. students are not excelling in mathematics and science
and even the most elite U.S. students do not compare well with their inter-
national counterparts (Schmidt, 2011). Mathematics scores on the National
Assessment of Educational Progress have improved since the mid-1990s,
he noted, but three-quarters of 8th graders still enter high school not hav-
ing reached the proficient level and three-quarters of high school students
graduate with “a relatively poor grasp of mathematics.” Even the most elite
U.S. students were last in physics and close to the bottom in mathematics
in a comparison with their counterparts in other nations on the Trends in
International Mathematics and Science Study.
Based on his own and other research, Schmidt has identified five
elements he views as essential to reforming mathematics education: (1)
curriculum, (2) teacher knowledge, (3) public support for demanding
standards and requirements, (4) student engagement in STEM areas, and
(5) instructional leadership.
His focus is curriculum, and Schmidt observed that it is important to
consider not only the curriculum that a school system intends to present,
but also the content that is actually delivered by teachers. In looking at
a school’s curricula, one must ask how coherent it is in the way it struc -
tures the material to be taught in each grade; what its degree of focus is,
in terms of how much exposure students actually have to different topics
and how many are presented at each grade; and how rigorous (cogni-
tively complex) it is. In each of these areas, curricula in the United States
leave much to be desired, in his view.
Other countries tend to have more rigorous curricula, Schmidt
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20 SUCCESSFUL STEM EDUCATION
explained. In U.S. middle schools, for example, “we are teaching arithme-
tic and what I call rocks and body parts, whereas in the rest of the world
they are teaching chemistry, physics, algebra, and geometry. They teach
their children how the brain sees as the photons enter the eye producing
a biochemical reaction. We teach the parts of the eye.”
STEM disciplines have a logical structure, he added. Mathematics is
very hierarchical, with concepts that build cumulatively. Knowledge in
the science disciplines is less hierarchical, but there is still a logical struc -
ture that defines the bodies of knowledge. That structure should guide
the mapping of topics for school curricula, he observed, so that students
can connect the deeper principles. The countries whose students perform
at the highest levels tend to have curricula that are very coherent and
focused—that is, they cover a few key topics at each grade from K through
8 and progress in a logical fashion from the most basic concepts to more
complex material: see Table 2-2. Curricula in the United States, generally
set at the state level, are far less orderly, Schmidt said, as Table 2-3 shows.
(This table is a graphic representation of the material covered by these
curricula. Because it is large, it is printed at a scale that illustrates patterns
in the lack of consistency on the coverage but does not allow readers to
discern the text.) However, the Common Core mathematics standards
more closely resemble the pattern for the high-performing countries: see
Table 2-4.
Table 2-2 also suggests the rigor of the curricula used by top-
performing countries with all students, not just those who are already
beginning to excel in STEM subjects. By 8th grade, for example, students
are learning about congruence, the rational number system, the field theo-
rems, and slope trigonometry. In Schmidt’s view, U.S. non-STEM schools
have an obligation to provide equal opportunities for all children: “If
there are three 2nd grade classrooms, they all should be covering the same
basic content. We shouldn’t be trying to differentiate and allow teachers
to make decisions about what content to cover.” In other countries, he
added, the teachers do not decide what material to cover: “The pedagogy
is their purview,” but content is determined by specialists in curriculum
development. In contrast, his research shows wide variations in what is
presented in classrooms at the same grade level, as well as in the amounts
of time devoted to different topics at the same grade. Schmidt said he is
not suggesting that classrooms should be completely uniform, but when
coverage of basic arithmetic in grade 2, for example, varies from 20 days
to 140 days in a year, as he has found, “You can see that there is something
afoul.”
Schmidt also argued that tracking of students in non-STEM schools
creates problems. His research has shown that students in schools that
offer only one curriculum learn significantly more mathematics than those
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2-15
21
FOUR KINDS OF SCHOOLS
TABLE 2-2 Top-Achieving Countries in Math, by Type of Curriculum
TABLE 2-2 Top-Achieving Countries in Mathematics, by Type of
Curriculum
SOURCE: SOURCE: (2011, slide 3). and McKnight (2005). Reprinted with permission from the Taylor
Schmidt Schmidt, Wang, Journal of Curriculum Studies.
& Francis Group.
in schools with multiple tracks, for example. Schools with multiple tracks
may in fact perform similarly, on average, but disaggregated results show
that while the elite students who are tracked perform at the highest levels,
“the kids at the bottom pay the price,” performing at lower levels than
their counterparts at nontracked schools.
In Schmidt’s view, another problem is that too many schools and
systems rely on textbooks and such materials as science kits to dictate the
curriculum. These resources should support the curriculum, but many
textbooks in the United States are crammed with material so they can
satisfy every customer: he pointed out that U.S. textbooks are, on average,
800 pages long, in comparison with those in other countries, which are
250-300 pages long. Thus, it is a district’s responsibility to reorganize the
material to make it coherent and consistent with the standards to which
its students are being taught. If all states adopt the Common Core stan-
dards, he added, which have been internationally benchmarked and are
focused, coherent, and rigorous (see Table 2-4), the result would likely be
less tracking and perhaps, eventually, more coherent textbooks. The cur-
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2-16
22
TABLE 2-3 Mathematics Curricula in Two States SUCCESSFUL STEM EDUCATION
TABLE 2-3 Mathematics Curricula of 21 U.S. States
SOURCE: Schmidt (2011, slide 4). Reprinted with permission.
SOURCE: Schmidt (2011). Reprinted with permission.
rent teaching force—another key factor—reflects the deficiencies that have
existed in STEM education for some time, Schmidt argued: “We have no
standards for teacher preparation and the result is enormous variation.”
Schmidt concluded with insights from research he and colleagues are
conducting to identify some primary areas of weakness in elementary and
middle schools’ mathematics instruction to see whether there would be
improvements if a more coherent curriculum were implemented. Prelimi-
nary results of a randomized trial in 60 districts suggest that the revised
curriculum did have a significant effect on learning in specific geometry
and algebra topics, such as shape relationships and properties; perimeter,
area, and volume; and manipulating expressions. His conclusion from
these results is that when students are offered a coherent curriculum,
taught by teachers who have been trained to implement it, “they will
learn.”
USING STATE DATABASES TO IDENTIFY SCHOOL OUTCOMES
This review of school types suggested many factors that may contrib -
ute to good outcomes for students. Administrative data collected by states
can be used in quantitative analyses that can shed light on the relation-
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E 2-4 Common Core Math Standards
23
FOUR KINDS OF SCHOOLS
TABLE 2-4 Common Core Mathematics Standards
SOURCE: Schmidt (2011). Reprinted with permission.
CE: Schmidt (2011, slide 9). Reprinted with permission.
ships between schools’ practices and policies and STEM outcomes for
students. Michael Hansen described preliminary research he is conduct-
ing at the Urban Institute’s Center for the Analysis of Longitudinal Data
in Education Research with data from Florida and North Carolina. He
emphasized that this research is still in progress and that the preliminary
exploratory analysis does not support causal inferences.
For Florida, the data available to Hansen included end-of-grade read-
ing and mathematics scores for public school students in grades 3-10 and
counts of courses taken in core STEM subjects, advanced STEM, and voca -
tional and technical education, for the school years 2004-2005 through
2008-2009; for North Carolina the same data were available for 2005-2006
through 2008-2009, as well as end-of-course scores.
Looking first at Florida, he noted a few apparent baseline differences
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24 SUCCESSFUL STEM EDUCATION
among school types (traditional, STEM, and charter or magnet).10 For
example, STEM schools appear to have more new teachers (26 percent, as
compared with 21 percent for traditional schools and 23 percent for the
charter and magnet schools). STEM schools also are significantly more
likely to offer vocational and technical courses (41 percent, compared
with 18 and 19 percent for the other types, respectively). At the same time,
students in STEM-focused schools take more advanced courses, as might
be expected. Hansen was particularly interested in whether expanding
access to STEM instruction generally would mean decreased opportuni -
ties for high-achieving students, and whether intense focus on STEM for
all students would crowd out learning in other subjects. His early findings
suggest the possibility that the availability of more advanced courses may
tend to push marginal students into lower-track courses. He and his col-
leagues did not find any negative effects for achievement in reading when
more STEM courses were offered.
Hansen also explored whether students in underrepresented minor-
ity groups respond differently to variation in STEM opportunities, and,
more broadly, whether current approaches are improving STEM outcomes
for all students or just those already interested in STEM. His results sug-
gested that when more advanced courses are offered, there is a “pretty
strong negative effect” on students who are members of underrepre-
sented minority groups. In other words, “there appears to be a tradeoff”
between helping students who are already doing well in STEM subjects
and expanding access for all students. The data also suggest benefit from
opportunities to conduct research projects in science and from exposure
to instruction that was project-based rather than lecture-based. From the
preliminary data, Hansen suggested that it appears that teacher charac -
teristics, such as years of experience, are correlated with outcomes for
students. From these findings, Hansen concluded that it is important for
policy makers to be precise about their goals for STEM education and
to focus on specific attributes. But, he added, “we are just beginning to
scratch the surface of these databases.”
10 For definitions of these school types, see Hansen (2011).
